Group 12: Green and Blue City

Motivation

The density and distribution of green and blue spaces within city communities have been found to be directly linked to how community members socialize, relax, and tend to their mental health. In every sense, green and blue spaces are a public good that should be prioritized and developed with the same enthusiasm as other public goods. Our stakeholders, members of the Mass Ave Coalition, have wisely identified the need to understand more about the green and blue spaces within their own community as well as how they relate to Boston as a whole. Using our findings, the Mass Ave Coalition will acquire a complete understanding of their own neighborhood as well as gain the tools necessary to effectively advocate for their green and blue space needs.

Data

Our data primarily consists of the trees, water features, and open spaces throughout Boston’s neighborhoods. We obtained two large datasets with registered trees in Boston. One of these, and the dataset we used most prevalently in our visualizations, sorts trees into the categories of a park or street tree. The other contains additional data about their season, species, and maintenance. We also gathered data about open spaces (i.e. parks, fields, or gardens) in Boston: their location, size, and ownership. In our data analysis and final visualizations, we relied most heavily on the combination of these tree and open space data sets, since we found them to be the most complete, accurate, and relevant to what our stakeholder hoped to achieve. In addition, we included supplemental data to address more specific tasks/questions, such as budget & spending logs, additional water space information, and property evaluation. Overall, we did not focus on blue or water features, since these are not as common and were not of primary concern to our stakeholder.

Task Analysis

Through conversation with our stakeholder, we effectively identified a set of task abstractions that we have used to guide our visualization process. We have a wide array of data relating to green and blue spaces within Boston proper that can help us complete the tasks we have laid out. Further data adjustments allowed us to communicate the reach, access, and condition of these green and blue spaces. Our final tasks we were looking to complete with our visualizations can be seen in the list below.

Data Analysis

Upon collection, analysis, and visualization of our data, we’ve found that the Mass Ave Coalition’s community has approximately equal representation of street and park trees as the rest of Boston. Street trees in particular are a consistent feature throughout all neighborhoods, while park trees have condensed areas where they are grouped such as the Boston Commons. The important exception to this analysis is East Boston’s Logan Airfield, which naturally cannot host trees. In terms of trees by area of a district, the districts of Beacon Hill, Allston, and Longwood have a significant number of trees per square mile with over 8,000 trees per square mile each.

Open spaces are also consistently located throughout Boston. Unless prohibitively small, neighborhoods average around 60 open spaces, while the largest, such as Roxbury or Dorchester, have over 100 open spaces. Some of the best neighborhoods at maximizing their space are West End with 113 spaces per square mile and North End and South End with 80 open spaces per square mile each. Amongst the open spaces, the distribution of Parks, Playgrounds, & Athletic fields was fairly consistent. Urban areas were also prevalent in the neighborhoods that can naturally support them. Community gardens are also a common form of open space, particularly in Roxbury. These specifically facilitate community interactions and provide direct support to their home neighborhoods in addition to the inherent benefits of green and blue spaces.

More specifically for the Mass Ave Coalition’s areas of interest, South End has about 2,000 more trees per square mile and over double the open spaces per square mile than Roxbury which could perhaps indicate the necessary introduction of more trees and open spaces into the Roxbury district. However, Roxbury is large so a more streetside investigation of the nearby neighborhoods to Massachusetts Avenue could provide a more in depth understanding than our more broad view.

Design Process

Our design process had three main parts. First we investigated our main datasets around the trees and open spaces using tableau to get a feel for what information we might want to present (Image 1 and 2). We found lots of interesting data about trees and open spaces and their distribution and found those views to be the most visually appealing so we decided to prioritize that information in our visualizations.

Second we spent significant time sketching visualizations that each emphasized a different aspect of our data or employed a unique technique of delivering that data to the end user (Image 3). Once we had a selection of visualizations we believed to be both effective and interesting for our stakeholder, we had to narrow our final choices to those that delivered the most data in the simplest terms. Using our task analysis as a benchmark, we made our selections with a few tweaks to end up with our final design.

Finally, we used the altair library in python to bring our visualization ideas to life in the interactive visualizations seen at the bottom of our website (Image 4). With interactivity as a key focus of our visualizations, we created three map views as well as a bar chart to display as much information as possible in a clear and compact manner.

Image 1: Tableau Tree Map Visualization

Image 2: Tableau Open Space Type Bar Chart

Image 3: Cloropleth Map Sketch

Image 4: Altiar Cloropleth Map

Conclusions

Our final three visualizations will allow the Mass Ave Coalition to better understand the availability of green and open spaces within their immediate community and within the broader city of Boston. We view this information as having two main impacts. First, members can use these visualizations in their own internal marketing and educational efforts to encourage local community members to take advantage of what the area has to offer. Second, members can use this tool to advocate for any open space needs they have in the future, demonstrating the importance, prevalence, and relative accessibility of green and open spaces.

Our visualizations could be improved by incorporating more zoom features which is a slight drawback of the altair library we used for our final visualizations. In addition we would look to more effectively display the types of open spaces within our initial map visualization to make our display a bit more compact. Future areas for research could include the most effective ways to incorporate additional trees or open spaces into neighborhoods that may be lacking them as well as a display of the additional budgeting information we were able to acquire.

Data Visualization(s)